Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-107)
MINISTRY OF
DEFENCE
29 NOVEMBER 2004
Q100 Mr Allan: Department of Health which
is £6-odd billion. Following Mr Williams's line of questioning,
am I right then in assuming that project will not go through the
OGC Gateway Review process?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It will go through
the analogous process we have, but this is semantics: it is broadly
the same. It has the same issues of assessment phase, concept
phase, they are moving to initial gate and then main gate. It
has the same process.[8]
Q101 Mr Allan: So your assurance to us
as Accounting Officer is that your process is exactly equivalent
to the OGC process.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Absolutely and
if it were not, then I would change it to make sure it was.
Q102 Mr Allan: Because it is such a big
project I wonder whether you would be able to supply us with a
note describing progress on that project with particular reference
to the recommendations of the National Audit Office in respect
of large IT projects like this, saying who the senior responsible
owner is, how the Gateway Review process you are doing is being
done and what kind of outcomes you have had.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: It is outside
this context, but I am happy to do that.[9]
Q103 Mr Allan: It might just be helpful,
because it does seem to be critical to reports like this.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We have applied
all the lessons listed by the OGC in terms of common causes of
failure and made sure that we have learned those lessons and applied
the right process. I am happy to do that.
Q104 Mr Allan: A note to show how that
is happening would be helpful.
Sir Kevin Tebbit: We are very
close to contract closure at the moment, so clearly there are
certain aspects I should not want to discuss at the moment. In
terms of process and how we are managing it, I am happy to do
that.
Q105 Mr Jenkins: I notice that in the
Report things like accommodation and medical supplies are urgent
operational requirements. Surely, as a Ministry of Defence, we
know that if we are going to go anywhere we are going to have
to have accommodation, we know if we start any shooting we are
going to have medical supplies, so what you are doing here is
taking the opportunity to prise some more money out of an ever-generous
Chancellor and funding the MoD budget, are you not?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: In the case
of the accommodation, that was already in the programme and we
accelerated it slightly. I think I am right in saying that is
one of the areas where there is an adjustment in the budget. We
could not do it better than we did because we did not know where
we would need to put the accommodation until the war fighting
ended. It was not one of those things which needed to arrive in
the middle of March, it was something which arrived when it was
needed. That was an example of pulling forward a programme which
was already there. In terms of medical gaps, it was a good example
of a large-scale operation generating extra requirements to those
we had already in the inventory. It is very important, particularly
in the medical field, firstly to say that all treatment was given
to anybody who needed it within the prescribed time lines; we
managed to ensure that everybody who needed treatment got it.
Secondly, this is one of the areas where we do have to make sure
we have a proper risk register of medical modules, so that we
know that if we do have any shortfalls which do not happen to
be in the inventory, whether it is because of shelf life or whatever,
we can get them fast. That is one of the areas where we have to
be absolutely certain we can get the medical equipment we need
into theatre quickly.
Q106 Chairman: Scattered through this
Report are examples of where you have been very resourceful in
finding solutions very quickly. There is one in Box 2 on page
9 for Storm Shadow and later on there is one about the equipment
for mine sweeping on page 15. So you can be very resourceful.
Why can we not see this in normal defence procurement?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Storm Shadow
was a normal procurement and we managed to advance the last few
months of it to get it into service a little early. Now we have
fully declared its in-service date, 28 October. That is a success
story. I take your point. The problem is that it is much easier
to procure stuff off the shelf or bring forward a programme which
is already pretty mature, especially when these are quite small
programmes—they are usually adjustments, enhancements, at
the margins of major projects—than it is to compare these—you
cannot really compare them—with the major equipment programmes
we are bringing forward, things which have to last for 20 or 30
years, which have to have applications across a wide front of
contingencies which will need to be capable of updating and changing
over a long period of time. The very big programmes we are dealing
with are very different in scope and size and breadth of application
from the sorts of UORs we are talking about here. These are usually
low value items, £2 million or £3 million as opposed
to multi-billion programmes.
Q107 Chairman: Thank you very much. As
I said at the beginning, this is generally a good Report and we
thank you for the way you have answered our questions this afternoon.
Clearly we can always make improvements, but when our people are
going into battle, we do not want somebody in your position in
the future always looking over their shoulder for fear of taking
any risk whatsoever because they might get a severe grilling at
the Committee of Public Accounts. I am sure that would never be
your attitude, Sir Kevin, would it?
Sir Kevin Tebbit: Thank you very
much, Chairman. I shall convey your remarks to the staff that
did all this, because it was a first-class effort.
8 Note by witness: MoD normally requires that
programmes should undergo reviews at critical stages linked to
the Smart Acquisition process. In the case of DII, which is a
key enabler for the Defence Change Programme, it was agreed by
MOD, Treasury and OGC that the programme would be reviewed using
the OSG GatewayTM Review process Back
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Ev 16-17 Back
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